Gay couples should have right to marry

This Op-Ed piece appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

Gay couples should have right to marry

David Cameron's proposal to legalise same-sex marriage has been criticised by Britain's most senior Roman Catholic cleric, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, and now also by controversial East Midlands MEP Roger Helmer.

Cardinal O'Brien makes a number of arguments to support his view on the grounds of religion and tradition. And he argues that the logical extension of accepting same-sex marriage is polygamous marriage between varying numbers of men and women.

Picking up on this observation, Mr Helmer asks: "If two men have a right to marry, how can we deny the same right to two siblings? Are we to authorise incest?"

The answer to this ridiculous remark is that it is up to society to define the limits of the law on marriage and one would imagine that it is unlikely to sanction incest.

Just because the concept of marriage may be extended to same-sex unions does not mean that chaos reigns and anything goes.

What is being proposed is not to tear up the institution of marriage but to extend its definition in order to better reflect the more tolerant age in which we now live.

The idea that marriage can only ever be the union of a man and a woman is not a fixed concept which is part of some sort of mystical natural law.

While we understand that it is an article of religious faith for some people, that is not the case for many others who will feel that society should be able to change its definition just like any other institution or law.

Indeed, it is a tribute to the concept of marriage that many same-sex couples wish to be able to make this commitment to one another.

If they were only worried about having a legally recognised relationship then the existing civil partnership law would be sufficient.

However, they clearly value marriage as something more than that and the fact that they want to make this commitment surely strengthens the institution.

We fully support David Cameron's proposals on this subject. Allowing same-sex couples to marry would do no harm to anybody and would remove a manifest inequality.